Tag Archives: Sean Lennon

I know it’s been several weeks since I last posted a blog, but a friend of mine kind of lit a fire under my ass and so here it is. I need to apologize ahead of time for the lack of audio in this video. That’ll teach me not to preview the video before leaving NAMM 2017! Yes, I’m really embarrassed that this didn’t come out right. I believe the mic wasn’t properly plugged into my iPad. Also, the initial feedback you’ll hear fades away…so bear with it.

The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus is absolutely amazing! From the outside, there is no clue as to how extensive the inside is. This is an entire recording studio on wheels! The bus travels to schools from coast to coast in the U.S., teaching kids how to record music, engineer and make videos. And this is its 20th anniversary doing so!

As the video opens, our host Ryan sits at the main console and to his right, you’ll see his image on a computer screen. That’s because the bus is filled with video cameras. Not just for security reasons, but for also recording music videos. After a few minutes, Ryan gets up and goes into the second section of the bus and closes the door behind him to demonstrate that each of the three sections of the bus are sound proof. In the second section are the drums. In the third section of the bus you’ll notice a lot of curtains are hung. When they are all fully spread out, they become a green screen for shooting videos with any background the artist my choose to use. The third section is also where the the employees sleep while traveling all year round with the bus. The bus sleeps three and Ryan at one point spent over 4.5 years traveling on the bus. (note: every other night they sleep in a hotel so they can shower and get a proper meal!)

There are a lot of corporate sponsors that make this bus what it is, but you can also donate to help keep it on the road. Yoko Ono has donated to the bus and Sean Lennon has visited the bus (Julian has not…yet.) There’s even a John Lennon Educational Tour Bus in England now.

For more information on the bus and it’s schedule, go to: www.LennonBus.org. If you’re an educator, you can also request that the bus visit your school.

At John Lennon’s house by Rosaura Lopez Lorenzo was recommended to me by a friend and fellow Beatle Freak, Thom Donovan. The book was originally written in Spanish (En casa de John Lennon) in 2005. Rosaura died several months after it’s publication, but it was translated to English and released as an e-book in 2013.

Rosaura in front of the Dakota in New York, NY

From 1976 until 1980, Rosaura Lopez Lorenzo worked for John Lennon and Yoko Ono as their housekeeper. According to the book, in June 2001, two reporters from TVG (Galician Television in Spain) were covering the annual Galician celebration in Newark, NJ when they stumbled upon a tambourine player. While interviewing her about when she came to America and her life here, she admitted to having previously been the housekeeper to John Lennon at one time. It was then that these two crafty reporters decided that Rosaura needed to write a book about her time with the Ono-Lennons!

The first thing to catch my eye in the book was Rosaura’s admission that this book in Yoko Ono approved. That immediately sets off bells and whistles in my skeptical head. It tells me that every word was scrutinized by Yoko and her lawyers. And in fact, both Yoko and her lawyer are mentioned in the dedication for “their exquisite attention”.

Rosaura says early on that this book was written to right all the wrongs that have been written about John and Yoko. She glosses over her daily 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. chores around the house while talking extensively about how apartment 72 is laid out, what color the rooms are painted and the contents of Sean’s bedroom and playroom.

In her story, John is a happy go lucky doting father who spends much of his time in his room playing guitar when he’s not sitting around smiling at his son, baking bread with Rosaura or asking her about her life in Spain. Sean is a happy child who loves her more than his own nanny and professes that she is his favorite. All the while, Yoko is happily conducting the family business during her days. But there are evil people working for them, including John Green, Fred Seaman and a nanny she called Lupa who would eventually get Rosaura fired.

Besides being hard to swallow, this book is poorly translated and edited. The typos and grammatical errors abound, which let me know that this was hastily edited for e-book format to squeeze out as many doubloons as possible from Rosaura’s rosy stories of the swell world inside the Dakota with the Ono-Lennon. There are many pages of photos included at the end of the book which some may find a bonus, but all in all, I found them just another way to capitalize on this tale. And for that reason…